


you will not see me

by slytherintbh



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Death, Not A Fix-It, gratuitous angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 07:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12552480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slytherintbh/pseuds/slytherintbh
Summary: Valjean pulls Javert from the waters, but he does not save a life that night. Fate would be far too kind in allowing that.





	you will not see me

**Author's Note:**

> somebody stop me because the number of fics im writing is ridiculous. i hope victor hugo rises from his grave and comes to personally slap me for butchering his masterpiece

He dies late into the fourth night, and Valjean hasn’t the strength to do anything but weep.

The damage was too great. All of this was in vain. Valjean thinks that he knew that from the beginning, yet he dragged Javert to the rue de l’Ouest apartment anyway, called for a doctor and felt his heart capitulate as the doctor’s expression grew gradually graver. “There are a great many injuries,” he had said. “I will patch what I can. If he makes it through the week, then we should move him to the hospital, see if we cannot set the bones properly. For now though… I am sorry, but it would not do to be overly hopeful.”

Valjean hopes. He hopes with all his strength of will. For four days he wipes sweat from Javert’s brow, winces at the terrible bruising that laces his body through and through, tries not to be affected by the piteous whimpering of the inspector as he dreams of unseen horrors.

On the third night, Javert becomes lucid, if only for a little while.

“Why am I alive?”

What a thing to say, when one has just awoken. Valjean is at the man’s side at a heartbeat.

“I couldn’t simply allow you to die,” he mutters, and touches a flannel to Javert’s brow. A bead of chilled water rolls down his forehead. Every line of Javert’s face is pure pain. “I am sorry.”

“You are a cruel man, Jean Valjean.” Javert appears to be in greatest agony, and Valjean begins to regret this. “Why could you not allow me that one… that dignity?”

“I am so sorry,” is all Valjean can say, and to his relief, Javert drops back into slumber.

There is another day of anxious care. The doctor stops again while on his rounds, and his expression is, as though it were possible, even darker.

“Prepare for the worst,” is all he says.

Javert wakes again that night, and his eyes are not looking at this world. He sees Valjean only faintly. His breath is laboured from the pain.

“I am dying,” he says. “God is merciful.”

“You will not.” There is no reason for Valjean to be so upset. He is terrified. He cannot bear this.

“Why,” Javert begins, and pales at what seems to be a sudden sting of pain. “Why? You need not have… done this. The outc-come is the same.”

“I thought I could save you.” And for whose benefit? Javert’s? Or to soothe the guilt of Valjean’s own soul?

Javert laughs. He has not often laughed when Valjean could hear. The sound is quiet, bitter, void of anything beyond a doomed man’s final triumph. “You are a fool. You merely prolong my suffering. You - you are a good man. Your downfall is that you try to be a saint.” Javert shuts his eyes and his teeth grit. “No, we will – have no miracles from you.”

His hand seizes against the cloth of his blanket. Valjean has nothing to say.

“It seems it is my hour.” Javert’s voice is impossibly weak for a man who has spent his whole life howling like a dog.

“May I see you in the next life.” The words are honest, the force of them is naught, Valjean lacks the power.

Again, Javert laughs, a mere scrape into the air. “No, Valjean. You… will not see me.”

He says no more. Valjean prays at his bedside. The shallow rise and fall of Javert’s chest grows shallower, until it becomes nothing at all, the exact point of passing is unknown but Valjean feels the moment all the same. That vibrant, active body is still, lax against the sheets.

Valjean has made him suffer for nothing. It would have been better that Javert had died quickly in the embrace of the waters – this is still a suicide, God still will look unfavourably upon the man who has spurned the gift of life.

Taking one limp hand, Valjean weeps against it. It seems he is cursed to failure. Even after all these years.

Even now.


End file.
